Ideas · Draft

Smart people mistake complexity for insight

Rough draft in progress. Notes toward a post, not the finished thing.

Intelligent people are uniquely prone to confusing complexity with depth: the ten-page memo that should be one page, the system that costs twice as much and impresses everyone. Mastery is the elegant simplicity that cuts through.

What it'll cover

• The trap: why intelligence reaches for complexity
• Examples: the memo, the architecture, the roadmap
• Why simplicity is harder and reads as less impressive
• A practical test: one page, one diagram, one sentence